Downturn in prices for recycled material puts company in a bind

Ed McMenamin

Friday

Jul 31, 2009 at 12:01 AMJul 31, 2009 at 8:06 PM

At Recycling For Illinois Inc.’s warehouse on Mechanic Street, old computer monitors, televisions and other electronics are piled head-high. Pallets overflow out the door and onto the sidewalk, covering the front of the property. A similar scene greets visitors at the company’s second warehouse. The economic downturn that affected businesses of all kinds especially hurt recyclers, RFI Operations Manager Paul Hauptly wrote in an e-mail, and now the business can’t get rid of the mess.

At Recycling For Illinois Inc.’s warehouse on Mechanic Street, old computer monitors, televisions and other electronics are piled head-high. Pallets overflow out the door and onto the sidewalk, covering the front of the property. A similar scene greets visitors at the company’s second warehouse.

RFI, a nonprofit organization, moved from Peoria to Pekin about a year ago because of a zoning issue. The business outgrew its old location and needed more space to store electronics — some of which was repaired and sold to a used electronics store in Peoria, the rest of which was recycled for scrap.

The economic downturn that affected businesses of all kinds especially hurt recyclers, RFI Operations Manager Paul Hauptly wrote in an e-mail, and now the business can’t get rid of the mess.

“For recyclers, we go home one night with everything we sold being worth ... $2 per pound and woke up the next morning with it being worth a maximum of (50 cents) per pound, but most was either valued at a penny a pound or worse, there was (a) charge just to give the material away,” he said.

When the value of recyclables crashed, Hauptly said, the company began to cut back, ending weekend collections and contracts with municipalities and counties, but it was “too late,” and material continued to accumulate on the company’s doorstep with no way to get rid of it.

He said the business is filing for bankruptcy in August, that all the paid staff is gone, and that he and a handful of volunteers have continued to attend to the items several days a week.

When RFI moved to Pekin, Pekin Code Enforcement Officer Ron Sieh requested a letter from the company stating it would not store electronics outside, Sieh said, because of the appearance of the Peoria warehouse.

He said he noticed the storage becoming a problem at the Pekin locations about six weeks ago.

“The city’s working right now to remedy the problem,” he said. “They’ve promised that it wouldn’t look like this.

“It’s great for recycling businesses to do what they do, (but) we can’t have a nuisance either.”

The company started showing signs of trouble this spring when it didn’t show up at Spruce Up Pekin’s semi-annual trash collection day, said Greg Ranney, superintendent of transportation and solid waste.

“I went down there the Friday before (Spruce Up Pekin),” he said, “and they said ‘There’s just no way.’ I could see there’s no space left and there’s nowhere to take their stuff. They just had crap everywhere — all over inside, all over outside.”